Future of Life Institute Podcast
The Future of Life Institute (FLI) is a nonprofit working to reduce global catastrophic and existential risk from powerful technologies. In particular, FLI focuses on risks from artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, nuclear weapons and climate change. The Institute's work is made up of three main strands: grantmaking for risk reduction, educational outreach, and advocacy within the United Nations, US government and European Union institutions. FLI has become one of the world's leading voices on the governance of AI having created one of the earliest and most influential sets of governance principles: the Asilomar AI Principles.
Episodes
December 1, 2023 • 100 mins
Darren McKee joins the podcast to discuss how AI might be difficult to control, which goals and traits AI systems will develop, and whether there's a unified solution to AI alignment.
Timestamps:
00:00 Uncontrollable superintelligence
16:41 AI goals and the "virus analogy"
28:36 Speed of AI cognition
39:25 Narrow AI and autonomy
52:23 Reliability of current and future AI
1:02:33 Planning for multiple AI scenarios
1:18:57 Will...
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November 17, 2023 • 108 mins
Mark Brakel (Director of Policy at the Future of Life Institute) joins the podcast to discuss the AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park, objections to AI policy, AI regulation in the EU and US, global institutions for safe AI, and autonomy in weapon systems.
Timestamps:
00:00 AI Safety Summit in the UK
12:18 Are officials up to date on AI?
23:22 Objections to AI policy
31:27 The EU AI Act
43:37 The right level of regulation
57:...
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November 3, 2023 • 127 mins
Dan Hendrycks joins the podcast again to discuss X.ai, how AI risk thinking has evolved, malicious use of AI, AI race dynamics between companies and between militaries, making AI organizations safer, and how representation engineering could help us understand AI traits like deception. You can learn more about Dan's work at https://www.safe.ai
Timestamps:
00:00 X.ai - Elon Musk's new AI venture
02:41 How AI risk thinking has evolv...
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October 20, 2023 • 134 mins
Samuel Hammond joins the podcast to discuss how AGI will transform economies, governments, institutions, and other power structures. You can read Samuel's blog at https://www.secondbest.ca
Timestamps:
00:00 Is AGI close?
06:56 Compute versus data
09:59 Information theory
20:36 Universality of learning
24:53 Hards steps in evolution
30:30 Governments and advanced AI
40:33 How will AI transform the economy?
55:26 How will AI ...
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October 17, 2023 • 59 mins
Are we doomed to a future of loneliness and unfulfilling online interactions? What if technology made us feel more connected instead?
Imagine a World is a podcast exploring a range of plausible and positive futures with advanced AI, produced by the Future of Life Institute. We interview the creators of 8 diverse and thought provoking imagined futures that we received as part of the worldbuilding contest FLI ran last year
In the e...
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October 10, 2023 • 50 mins
Let’s imagine a future where AGI is developed but kept at a distance from practically impacting the world, while narrow AI remakes the world completely. Most people don’t know or care about the difference and have no idea how they could distinguish between a human or artificial stranger. Inequality sticks around and AI fractures society into separate media bubbles with irreconcilable perspectives. But it's not all bad. AI markedly ...
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October 5, 2023 • 122 mins
Steve Omohundro joins the podcast to discuss Provably Safe Systems, a paper he co-authored with FLI President Max Tegmark. You can read the paper here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2309.01933.pdf
Timestamps:
00:00 Provably safe AI systems
12:17 Alignment and evaluations
21:08 Proofs about language model behavior
27:11 Can we formalize safety?
30:29 Provable contracts
43:13 Digital replicas of actual systems
46:32 Proof-carrying code...
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October 3, 2023 • 64 mins
What if AI allowed us to communicate with animals? Could interspecies communication lead to new levels of empathy? How might communicating with animals lead humans to reimagine our place in the natural world?
Imagine a World is a podcast exploring a range of plausible and positive futures with advanced AI, produced by the Future of Life Institute. We interview the creators of 8 diverse and thought provoking imagined futures that w...
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September 26, 2023 • 58 mins
If you could extend your life, would you? How might life extension technologies create new social and political divides? How can the world unite to solve the great problems of our time, like AI risk? What if AI creators could agree on an inspection process to expose AI dangers before they're unleashed?
Imagine a World is a podcast exploring a range of plausible and positive futures with advanced AI, produced by the Future of Life...
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September 21, 2023 • 100 mins
Johannes Ackva joins the podcast to discuss the main drivers of climate change and our best technological and governmental options for managing it. You can read more about Johannes' work at http://founderspledge.com/climate
Timestamps:
00:00 Johannes's journey as an environmentalist
13:21 The drivers of climate change
23:00 Oil, coal, and gas
38:05 Solar, wind, and hydro
49:34 Nuclear energy
57:03 Geothermal energy
1:00:41 Mos...
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September 19, 2023 • 55 mins
How do low income countries affected by climate change imagine their futures? How do they overcome these twin challenges? Will all nations eventually choose or be forced to go digital?
Imagine a World is a podcast exploring a range of plausible and positive futures with advanced AI, produced by the Future of Life Institute. We interview the creators of 8 diverse and thought provoking imagined futures that we received as part of th...
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September 12, 2023 • 60 mins
What if we had one advanced AI system for the entire world? Would this led to a world 'beyond' nation states - and do we want this?
Imagine a World is a podcast exploring a range of plausible and positive futures with advanced AI, produced by the Future of Life Institute. We interview the creators of 8 diverse and thought provoking imagined futures that we received as part of the worldbuilding contest FLI ran last year.
In the th...
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September 8, 2023 • 116 mins
Tom Davidson joins the podcast to discuss how AI could quickly automate most cognitive tasks, including AI research, and why this would be risky.
Timestamps:
00:00 The current pace of AI
03:58 Near-term risks from AI
09:34 Historical analogies to AI
13:58 AI benchmarks VS economic impact
18:30 AI takeoff speed and bottlenecks
31:09 Tom's model of AI takeoff speed
36:21 How AI could automate AI research
41:49 Bottlenecks to A...
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September 5, 2023 • 52 mins
How does who is involved in the design of AI affect the possibilities for our future? Why isn’t the design of AI inclusive already? Can technology solve all our problems? Can human nature change? Do we want either of these things to happen?
Imagine a World is a podcast exploring a range of plausible and positive futures with advanced AI, produced by the Future of Life Institute. We interview the creators of 8 diverse and thought p...
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September 5, 2023 • 62 mins
Are today's democratic systems equipped well enough to create the best possible future for everyone? If they're not, what systems might work better? And are governments around the world taking the destabilizing threats of new technologies seriously enough, or will it take a dramatic event, such as an AI-driven war, to get their act together?
Imagine a World is a podcast exploring a range of plausible and positive futures with adv...
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August 29, 2023 • 2 mins
Coming Soon…
The year is 2045. Humanity is not extinct, nor living in a dystopia. It has averted climate disaster and major wars. Instead, AI and other new technologies are helping to make the world more peaceful, happy and equal. How? This was what we asked the entrants of our Worldbuilding Contest to imagine last year.
Our new podcast series digs deeper into the eight winning entries, their ideas and solutions, the diverse team...
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August 20, 2023 • 104 mins
Robert Trager joins the podcast to discuss AI governance, the incentives of governments and companies, the track record of international regulation, the security dilemma in AI, cybersecurity at AI companies, and skepticism about AI governance. We also discuss Robert's forthcoming paper International Governance of Civilian AI: A Jurisdictional Certification Approach. You can read more about Robert's work at https://www.governance.ai...
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July 21, 2023 • 85 mins
Jason Crawford joins the podcast to discuss the history of progress, the future of economic growth, and the relationship between progress and risks from AI. You can read more about Jason's work at https://rootsofprogress.org
Timestamps:
00:00 Eras of human progress
06:47 Flywheels of progress
17:56 Main causes of progress
21:01 Progress and risk
32:49 Safety as part of progress
45:20 Slowing down specific technologies?
52:2...
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July 6, 2023 • 101 mins
On this special episode of the podcast, Jaan Tallinn talks with Nathan Labenz about Jaan's model of AI risk, the future of AI development, and pausing giant AI experiments.
Timestamps:
0:00 Nathan introduces Jaan
4:22 AI safety and Future of Life Institute
5:55 Jaan's first meeting with Eliezer Yudkowsky
12:04 Future of AI evolution
14:58 Jaan's investments in AI companies
23:06 The emerging danger paradigm
26:53 Economic transfo...
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June 22, 2023 • 144 mins
Joe Carlsmith joins the podcast to discuss how we change our minds about AI risk, gut feelings versus abstract models, and what to do if transformative AI is coming soon. You can read more about Joe's work at https://joecarlsmith.com.
Timestamps:
00:00 Predictable updating on AI risk
07:27 Abstract models versus gut feelings
22:06 How Joe began believing in AI risk
29:06 Is AI risk falsifiable?
35:39 Types of skepticisms about...
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